LinkedIn Wednesday confirmed its acquisition of startup Rapportive, which makes a browser plugin for Gmail that provides contextual information about email contacts. “Rapportive does a great job at delivering relevant information in a platform that is universally used by professionals – email. It's very much in line with LinkedIn's mission to make professionals more productive and successful in their careers,” stated Hani Durzy, LinkedIn’s director of corporate communications, in a statement. The AllThingsD blog last month first reported on the deal being in the works, citing unnamed sources. Rapportive’s software overlays the social networking accounts of email correspondents on …

Media industry veteran Gerry Byrne has been elected the next chairman of the Board of Directors of the John A Reisenbach Foundation. The Foundation was established in 1991, a year after murder of John Reisenbach in Greenwich Village. Reisenbach, just 33 years old at the time of his death, was vice president of national advertising sales for what was then All American Television. To date, the foundation created in his honor has generated more than $6 million for programs designed to improve safety and the quality of life in New York City. In pursuit of its mission the foundation collaborates …

WPP this morning announced a reorganization of some of its digital design shops, naming Shane Atchison CEO of Possible Worldwide, and appointing Trevor Kaufman chairman.Atchison was CEO and co-founder of ZAAZ, which most recently has been aligned with WPP's Wunderman unit.

Over global economic concerns shot down U.S. markets on Tuesday by over one a half percent -- and TV and entertainment stocks were not immune. The Dow Jones U.S. Broadcasting and Entertainment Index lost 1.5% or 8.2 points to land at 532.50. The broader Dow Jones Industrials sank 1.6%, or 203.66 points to end the day at 12,759.15. CBS was a big loser on the day, down 2.6% to $29.08. Viacom was down 2.6% as well to land at $56.06; News Corp. went 2% lower to $19.11; and Walt Disney was off 1.6% to close at $42.00. One smaller media …

In the wake of Facebook rolling out a new ad tools for marketers, Nielsen released data Tuesday showing social ads deliver 55% higher recall than ads that don’t allow people to share ad content with friends. The finding is drawn from an analysis of 79 Facebook campaigns over six months to see how well ads with social messages succeeded in breaking through to the audience. It defines social ads as those served to users who have friends that are fans of, or have interacted with, the advertised brand and highlight the relationship, while non-social ads are served to …

Online radio service Pandora Tuesday reported another quarter of user growth in the fourth quarter but continues to struggle with profitability. The company reported a loss of 5 cents a share on revenue of $81.3 million, missing the Wall Street consensus estimate of a 2 cent per share loss and revenue of $83 million in its fourth quarter ending Jan. 31. Excluding about $3.4 million in stock-based compensation, Pandora would have had a loss of 3 cents a share. In a conference call with analysts, Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy said ad revenue in the quarter was weaker than expected …

McCann Worldgroup CFO Tara Comonte has been selected as a Young Global Leader for the 2012 World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency confirmed today. Young Global Leaders are selected from around the world in the arenas of business, government, civil society, arts and culture, academia, and media. Of the thousands of candidates nominated each year, only 100 to 200 accomplished individuals under the age of 40 make the cut. YGLs are involved in virtually all World Economic Forum meetings, research and initiatives, articulating the views and interests of the next generation of leaders. They are asked to provide …

Mindshare has launched the first edition of its new quarterly trend series, Culture Vulture, which examines the entrepreneurial efforts of Gen Yers (broadly defined as falling between the ages of 17 and 32 by the agency) across 30 countries globally. The report examines over 300 Gen Y entrepreneurial businesses across 38 cities including New York, Buenos Aires, London and Shanghai to understand how the youth's innovative ideas can inspire and fuel game-changing communication behaviour. "At the core of this first edition is the belief that businesses need a little bit of reverse mentoring from time to time- big blue chip …

With the launch of the iPad 3 imminent, new data from Jumptap shows the Kindle Fire continues to gain ground against the Apple tablet on the mobile ad network. Since November, traffic from the Amazon device has increased 50% and accounted for a third of all tablet traffic as of January. During the same period, traffic from the iPad declined from 65% to 48%. Tablets account for only about 10% of Jumptap’s overall traffic. The ad network’s latest monthly metrics also showed that Android and iOS together make up 91% of the smartphone market, with the Google platform at 58.8% …

There are some big developments going on over at sfBIG, the Bay Area's digital advertising and media community. If you have to ask, "which bay," well then you probably shouldn't be reading MediaPost's "Raw News" blog. But just in case you didn't know what the "sf" in its name stands for, the group has changed its official name to the "San Francisco Bay Area Innovation Group," according to Co-Founder John Durham, who also heads digital agency Catalyst S+F.